This repository holds scripts, playbooks and configurations to automate infrastructure configuration tasks on Raspberry Pi boards.
The scripts provided are based on Ansible technology (https://www.ansible.com/) for task automation; refer to Ansible technical documentation (https://docs.ansible.com/) for detailed instructions regarding installation and setup.
Ansible uses ssh to connect to the managed infrastructure, so you will first need to generate an ssh key pair; the script ansible-initialize.sh, provided in the root folder of this repo, copies the public ssh key to a remote destination (you will need to pass it as a parameter when you launch the script), assuming you generated a key called ansible_rsa and saved it in .ssh sub-folder under your user home directory.
A file, named ansible.cfg, is also provided to set basic configurations needed to run Ansible; if you launch Ansible from the repo root directory, this file will be read and used as the source for configuration settings (unless you have set an ANSIBLE_CONFIG environment variable, which has precedence), the basic configuration you should have is something like this:
where:
- inventory defines where Ansible will look for the inventory file, which is used by Ansible to know which servers to connect and manage.
- private_key_file points to the SSH private key you have previously generated, used by Ansible to connect and launch tasks on the target Raspberry Pi;
Change the parameters according to your environment.
The raspberry.yaml playbook is provided to do the following basic tasks on all Raspberry boxes consistently:
* update package manager repo cache and upgrade installed packages on all Raspberry Pi boxes
* install OpenSSL on all Raspberry Pi boxes
A convenient scripts install.sh is provided, using raspberry.yaml playbook to consistently configure Raspberry Pi boxes.
Playbook refers to config.yml yaml file provided in conf sub-folder for common variables setup and usage.
Once Raspberry Pi boxes are installed and configured with the common basic software stack, for each specific box (e.g.: appserver, maps_service, calendar_service, ...) a specific software stack is installed and configured.
The raspberry-sw-prereqs.yaml playbook is provided to do the following tasks on specific Raspberry boxes consistently:
* install OpenJDK on all appserver Raspberry Pi boxes
* install NodeJS, npm and pm2 on all maps_service Raspberry Pi boxes
A convenient scripts install-sw-prereqs.sh is provided, using raspberry-sw-prereqs.yaml playbook to consistently configure Raspberry Pi boxes, each with its own specific software stack.
A very basic infrastructure to run web applications can be made of two major components:
- a Web Server where web application code is actually deployed and is run from - this can be implemented using Apache2
- a Proxy server that intercepts user requests and forward to the the Web Server, which actually serves the content back to the user - this can be implemented using Nginx
The raspberry-web.yaml playbook is provided under web sub-folder to deploy this basic web infrastructure by doing the following basic tasks on all Raspberry boxes consistently:
* update package manager repo cache and upgrade installed packages on all Raspberry Pi boxes
* install OpenSSL on all Raspberry Pi boxes
* install Nginx on Raspberry Pi boxes marked as proxies and copy utility scripts for Nginx (provided in the *scripts* sub-folder)
* install Apache2 on Raspberry Pi boxes marked as application servers and copy utility scripts for Apache2 (provided in the *scripts* sub-folder)
Some convenient scripts are provided under web sub-folder::
- install-web.sh uses raspberry-web.yaml playbook to install Nginx and Apache2 on dedicated Raspberry Pi boxes consistently
- uninstall-web.sh uses raspberry-web-uninstall.yaml playbook to uninstall custom software from all Raspberry Pi boxes.
To automate Docker installation on Raspberry Pi boxes using Ansible: follow instructions at https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/raspberry-pi-4-personal-datacentre-part-1-ansible-docker-and-nextcloud.
General instructions on how to install and uninstall Docker on Raspberry Pi boxes are available at https://phoenixnap.com/kb/docker-on-raspberry-pi.
The raspberry-docker.yaml playbook is provided under docker sub-folder to install Docker on all Raspberry Pi boxes.
Some convenient scripts are provided under docker sub-folder:
- install-docker-role.sh, which installs geerlingguy.docker_arm role (see Ansible Galaxy https://galaxy.ansible.com/geerlingguy/docker_arm and GitHub Repo https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-role-docker_arm for more info) that installs Docker on Linux, specially tailored for ARM-based computers like the Raspberry Pi.
- install-docker.sh uses raspberry-docker.yaml playbook to activate a Docker role on all Raspberry boxes
- uninstall-docker.sh uses raspberry-docker-uninstall.yaml playbook to uninstall Docker from all Raspberry Pi boxes.
I use Raspberry in some projects I develop for fun.
This is a side project that I am developing to handle sensors for various Home Automation tasks; see https://github.com/robipozzi/windfire-home-automation
I wrote a more extensive article on how to use Ansible to automate various installation, configuration and application deployment tasks on Raspberry Pi, you can read it at the link here https://bit.ly/3b13V9h.